Cold Iron, Bitter Warriors
by Pyrisath
Summary: Iron Warriors: Masters of siege craft. Sometimes as little as a squad is left behind to hold a world, sometimes a full hundred men. Bitter from the unfairness of their position, touched by a cold their physiology cannot negate. The days of the Great Crusade are over for the warriors of Warsmith Orgruk's battalion.(Heresy era)
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Probably isn't necessary to say, but I don't own anything. All intellectual property belongs to Games Workshop and the appropriate affiliates, the usual.

I used to write for funsies stories when I was younger, which after rereading them, were quite bad. After discovering the world of fan fiction I decided to get my feet into it. I have a few cool ideas for stories in other sections, but I figured that it would be better to improve upon my writing before I got started with anything serious. So here's the background story to my Warhammer 40k army. Any kind of reviews welcome, criticism especially. Practice is only half of getting better, I need to know what I am doing wrong as well. Anyway, on with the show!

* * *

Warsmith Orgruk felt cold.

Not just because of the frozen world that his command had been stationed to. A frozen world, with little more than ice and rock coating the surface. Yet just beneath its brittle cover, a system of caves ran throughout the thick crust of the planet, rich with natural minerals. Between being the largest planet in the system, and the system itself being a choke point for a well-used Warp lane, there was value in holding that frozen rock. Or so he had been told.

But Orgruk was not outside, or even exposed to the frigid entrances to the underground caverns. Still he felt cold.

The Warsmith stood in a heated strategium at least a mile beneath the surface, at a table surrounded by four others, his trusted captains; Rohkan, Argrak, Sorric and Forcrick. They commanded a force of 100 Iron Warriors and their appropriate heavy armor and weapons support, a force that could conquer a system in a protracted siege without needing to resupply. But now they had been disgraced, sent off to organize a mere mining operation.

Orgruk felt cold. Not from temperature, but from bitterness.

He felt he should have protested the orders. 'But my lord, this is a job better suited to the Imperail Army!' he would have said, 'Astartes are meant for war!' But he had not argued with his Primarch, for as his orders were given, he heard in his voice and saw in his eyes the same feeling he felt now: Hopeless bitterness, and resentment for the situation thrust upon them.

"Brothers," Orgruk started, not letting the cold he felt reach his voice. He opened his mouth to speak, but found he didn't have words. After a moment, he started again. "Brothers. The Primarch has sent us to this world to both guard it and extract every available resource from its frozen rock. We have the tools and an excess of manpower to complete this task. However, before we can begin mining, there is something that must be done about this… hole in the ground."

The four captains murmured their agreement. In landing, they had been forced to navigate their Stormbirds through a tight tunnel to reach a too-small landing pad leading to an even smaller outpost. Most of their force stayed within their transports, as there was not enough space within the facility to hold all one hundred Astartes at once.

"First, we will expand this building." As the Warsmith spoke, he motioned toward the table that the five Men stood around. A holographic image of the structure and the surrounding caverns appeared, bathing the chamber in an amber glow. "I will not have our Brothers resting in their grav-harnesses in between shifts. Once we have sufficient living quarters, we will expand out through our entrance tunnel. We will construct a surface landing pad to simplify and remove the risk of transportation to and from the caverns. Any questions?"

The four captains looked at each other. _Ah yes_, thought Orgruk,_ the conspiratory glance, they will ask _that.

Rohkan turned. "How long until we rejoin the Great Crusade?"

The Warsmith paused, and lowered his head. The cold he felt demanded for him to scream in frustration, but he took the bitterness, and funneled it into his words. He had to deliver the news just right, to let them know that he hated their assignment more than they did. Orgruk did not look up, and spoke quietly, with the edge of winter chill on his words.

"We have been assigned to designation: KLh-H-07 until such a time as the system is no longer of strategic value, or until the Adminstratum gets the news of the planet to the Mechanicum, and they come to make this a Forgeworld."

The feeling of Rohkan's eyes faded, as did the feeling of tension in the room. Looking up, he could see that the four captains were slumped against the strategium table.

_They feel the cold too, now. _A slight snarl reached Orgruk's lips before he stated loudly, "Dismissed. Begin construction immediately."

Closing: Its short. Its an intro. Future sections will be longer, I just wanted to get the ball rolling so that there is a sense of commitment for me.


	2. Chapter 2

The four captains left for the landing pad without another word. Orgruk pressed a series of commands into the console before him, uploading construction plans to Rohkan's suit-board computer. That captain was a natural leader and organizer, he knew that he wouldn't have to direct any portion of the construction operation as long as Rohkan was overseeing it. In old times, the captain would have snapped at the Warsmith for attempting to help in a way he hadn't accounted for. In old times…

A brief howling sound came from the distance before disappearing with an audible thud as the door shut once more. With a howl, Orgruk expressed his frustration on the surface of the strategium table. The image of the cavern flickered, the entire room darkening for a moment. Breathing heavily he stared at the image of the local caverns that their sensor equipment had detected. His Iron Warriors had been deployed to deal with an entire planet, an assignment that normally meant great honor. But this planet had no foe but the natural elements.

He longed to be deep in the muddy trenches of the other worlds he had fought on. When no other Legion could break open a fortress, the Iron Warriors were called in. To do the dirty work of finer Legions, some might say, but Orgruk saw it as an honor. He remembered identifying targets for heavy artillery from the forwardmost trench, when the concussive shout and response of direct firing howitzers rendering even his superhuman ears ringing uselessly. He felt goosebumps as he recalled rising from the trench once the walls had fallen, unable to hear his own voice as he called his men to charge the fortress with him…

Orgruk's breath caught in his throat. Leading his men. That was what he was doing here. Whether or not their foe was a lifeless or its hostile inhabitants, he would lead his men and suffer the worst with him. And right now, what must they think of him? Ordering them to begin construction and not showing his face once? He let his breath go, a plan of action forming in his mind.

* * *

Rohkan watched the Stormbird navigate back out of the cavern, returning to their supply ship in orbit to retrieve additional metal plates and construction machinery. The pounding of several dozen iron-shod feet against the metal deck filled his ears.

Turning to face his men, he could see his words taking form. Sorric's squad moved the metal plates into piles at several points along the outpost-edge of the dock, as Forcrik's squad moved beams of various sizes near these piles. He could not see his own or Argrak's squad directly, but he knew where they were. The floor of the cavern was almost five meters below the dock and outpost, and anything they built directly on to the existing constructions would not hold under the weight of an Astartes. The two unaccounted for squads were down on the cavern floor, laying out the basework for the supports that would hold up their compound.

A second Stormbird was already approaching to fill the spot of the one that had left, and Rohkan looked up to the deep roar he heard from the cave above them. He would have watched the craft land, had a brief pause in the tramping of feet not drawn his attention.

Several Space Marines stood at attention, facing the door to the outpost, where a helmetless Warsmith Orgruk could be seen. He paused to look over the Marines before speaking in a command voice. "Do not halt construction because of me. Get your living quarters built."

Those who had stopped to pay attention quickly returned to their tasks, and the Warsmith closed to distance to stand before Rohkan. They stood for a tense moment, the hard face that the helmetless Marine worse gave Rohkan pause, wondering what his Warsmith wanted from him. "Where do you need an extra set of hands? I will work."

Rohkan paused a moment. Orgruk was a hard worker, an easy job would insult him. "Down below, there are two squads constructing a framework for future construction."

He nodded, striding to the edge of the platform in a few steps. The Warsmith leaned over the edge to check the ground beneath him, then stepped off the ledge with a loud thump a few seconds later.

* * *

Construction of the primary supports took less than six Terran standard hours, which gave the Iron Warriors a large area to build into, as well as section of rock surface to burrow into for additional space. Absolute minimum lodgings and storage facilities would take another twelve Terran hours, while full furnishings of lighting and mechanical stations would need another four hours. Even then mining operations could not begin, for they would still need a storage area for minerals, as well as a more streamlined system of transporting materials to orbit.

The squads that had erected the support frames were beginning to return to the main platforms to continue construction, but Warsmith Orgruk had a different plan. There had been something odd about the cavern floor, and he intended to investigate. Orgruk had paused captain Argrak before he had gone up top, and asked him to summon two of his best men to stay down and check something with him.

Argrak was the youngest of the four captains under Orgruk. He was an Olympian native, whereas the other three captains and the Warsmith himself were Terran-born. Because of his youth, Argrak now feared he would be reprimanded for his squad performing shoddy work. The way the Warsmith walked between the support beams, searching for something, did not relieve this feeling.

Argrak followed nervously, until Ogruk turned to him and spoke. "Look at the floor and the way it transitions to the sides of the cavern, and then to the ceiling. What do you see?"

The captain was taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovered, and observed as he was asked to. "The floor seems to be carved in parallel dips, which…" He looked up the walls and to the ceiling. "When combined with the markings on the rest of the cavern, look like they were carved by drill bits."

The Warsmith nodded in approval of his observation. Indeed, the entire cavern looked like it had been hollowed out by a giant drill. "But look there, in this stretch. It looks like stone that was ground into sand, then heated to glass before being left here. I suspect that whatever dug these tunnels left this behind."

He motioned along the trail of the glass-like substance, indicating the texture of the material. "Whatever made this went that way, you can see the way the newer glass pooled over recently laid and already cool glass. And whatever it was that dug this was here recently… And for some reason it hasn't been cleaned up for yet."

Argrak frowned, kicking at the strip of 'glass' with the tip of his boot. It shattered into several sections. He looked up at his commander. "What do we do, Warsmith? Wait until the clean up crew arrives and see what happens?"

"No. If this trail was created by the thing that dug this trench, then we will reach something no matter which direction we follow it." Orgruk stated, lifting his head briefly, before indicating the direction that lead away from the base. "We go that way."

* * *

Rohkan tore his gaze away from the beautiful sight of his orders being followed. There was something that shouldn't be there. Re-focusing, he searched his senses for the source of the feeling of off-ness. The rhythmic pounding of industry filled his ears, but something moved beneath the sound… There! A sound, from below the platform he stood on.

Snap. Crunch. The sound of gravel against stone. A pause, then Snap again.

Drawing his bolt pistol, Rohkan stalked toward the edge of the platform in the direction he heard the scratching traveling in. Native lifeforms on the platform came as a surprise, but not debilitatingly so. All the same, he was ready to kill whatever it was so that he could throw it at the Apothecaries for study. One more step…

He crouched, scanning the farthest point he could see as he moved down to look over the edge. Nothing, only darkness. He blink-clicked his helmet's visual feed through several spectra, but they all returned the same: Smooth stone except for the strange patterns in the surface.

Rohkan grunted, rising back to his feet and returning to his observing post. He did not doubt what he had heard, but if the xeno had no immediate aggressive intention, then it could wait to be dealt with by a patrol into the caverns. He made a note in his on-board computer to bring the knowledge forward to the Warsmith when he next saw him.

* * *

Orgruk was beginning to regret not wearing his helmet. Although his superhuman physiology could handle the below-freezing temperatures in the air, the discomfort it caused was becoming irritating. He was forced to keep his mouth shut both to keep his throat warm, and the prevent his saliva from freezing. He could have easily stopped before they got too far from the base, but that was not his way… Or so he told himself. He had really just forgotten.

They had walked for close to fifteen minutes with no results when the Warsmith felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulderguard restrain his walking. He paused, turning to face Argrak and tilting his head in question.

"We shouldn't head this far out on an unscheduled scouting mission. Vox will not be able to reach base soon, and…" Argrak looked over the other Marine's features. Orgruk's skin was extremely pale and stretched, giving his face an eerie shading. "You should at least have your helmet if we are going to go scouting."

Orgruk turned back to the direction they had been walking. His eyes, although adjusted to darker conditions, could only see so far into the cavern. At the farthest point, he saw what looked like a sharp drop, or some other intraversable point. He suspected that Argrak had spied this obstruction, and was giving him a reason to stop and return before his search was cut short by indignity. Turning back to the captain, he nodded once, and began the walk back to base.

The flaring glow of a landing Stormbird could be seen as they neared the base, and the rhythmic industry filled their ears. Each of the four marines in the scouting party began walking in time to the hammer-blows.

Snap.

Four bolt weapons were trained toward the ceiling in an instant. Crunch.

"Sir, its eating th—"

"Kill it."

The sound of two bolt pistol shots filled the tunnel, the muzzle flare briefly lighting the floor and nearby wall. Two solid impacts, and the sound of falling gravel. A brief moment later, and the thing had fallen to the floor, bolt weapons still trained on its form. A few tense seconds of stillness, and Orgruk advanced on the creature to investigate. The crackle of a vox link came from the helmets of the three Astartes who wore them, and Argrak answered, describing the situation.

Orgruk pushed at the corpse with his boot, watching how the strangely hard shape reacted to contact. The thing was shaped like an oval disk, about two meters long and a meter wide, but only half a meter thick. Six simple claw-limbs sprouted from the disk, three to each side. The thing was completely still except for the Warsmith's prodding, and a pool of viscous black fluid spread from beneath it.

Footsteps approached him from behind. "Warsmith? What shall we do?" It was Argrak. He sounded worried, almost?

He turned to face his captain, a grin on his face. "What shall we do? Take this thing back to base, get the Apothecaries to chop it up and figure out how to kill it better. We have something to fight on this planet."

Closing/personal notes: Some issues I am seeing with my own writing, I begin too many paragraphs with a character's name. It feels wrong. Need to begin paragraphs differently? Also, this story feels really low in actual content, but I suppose that's fine. I'm writing it as an exercise in improvement, not a tour de force.


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